4th International Sclerochronology Conference

Following the very successful international meetings in St Petersburg, Florida, USA (2007), Mainz, Germany (2010), and Caernarfon, North Wales, UK (2013), the 4th International Sclerochronology Conference is to be held in Portland, Maine, 5-9 June 2016.

Venue

ISC2016 will be held at The Westin - Portland Harborview hotel and event center, located in the historic Arts District of downtown Portland, Maine.

Background information

The 2016 International Sclerochronology Conference will bring together scientists from around the globe to share progress in the field of sclerochronology. ISC2016 will provide an avenue for scientists from different backgrounds with common research goals to collaborate and develop new ideas. The Organizing Committee is pleased to invite interested researchers, students, and educators to be involved.

Sclerochronology is the study of physical and chemical variations in the accretionary hard tissues of organisms, and the temporal context in which they formed. Sclerochronology focuses primarily upon growth patterns reflecting annual, monthly, fortnightly, tidal, daily, and sub-daily increments of time entrained by a host of environmental and astronomical pacemakers. Familiar examples include daily banding in reef coral skeletons or annual growth rings in mollusk shells. Sclerochronology is analogous to dendrochronology, the study of annual rings in trees, and equally seeks to deduce organismal life history traits as well as to reconstruct records of environmental and climatic change through space and time.

Abstracts and registration

Registration and abstract submission is now open for the 4th International Sclerochronology Conference (ISC) 2016.

Abstract submission has been extended to 22 April 2016. Regular registration rates now apply.

Also, you can submit a second abstract to "Sclerochronology in the Classroom." More information can be found on the website.

Sessions

ISC2016 will be organized around eight sessions open to oral and poster presentations.

1. Climate and Oceans: Past and Present

Keynote: Kim Cobb, Georgia Tech

Dr Kim Cobb is a Professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. She holds a BA with Honors in Geology and Biology from Yale University and obtained a PhD in Oceanography from Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

Dr Cobb's research seeks to generate new high-resolution records of past tropical Pacific climate variability from corals and cave stalagmites, with an emphasis on the last decades to centuries. She combines proxy records with climate models in order to characterize natural climate variability in the tropics and identify climate trends associated with anthropogenic climate change.

2. Proxy Development: Problems and Opportunities

Keynote: Jochen Halfar, University of Toronto, Mississauga

Dr Jochen Halfar is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences at the University of Toronto Mississauga (Canada). Dr Halfar holds a BS in Geology and Paleontology from the University of Heidelberg (Germany) and a MS in Geology from the University of Gattingen (Germany). He obtained a PhD in Geological and Environmental Sciences from Stanford University (USA).

Dr Halfar's research is focused on deciphering paleoclimates on different time scales ranging from the past centuries to the Neogene using geochemical, sedimentological, and oceanographic approaches. His recent work includes developing proxy records from information contained in calcified growth bands of long-lived coralline red algae to reconstruct sea surface temperatures of extratropical seas using state-of-the-art microanalytical geochemical techniques.

3. Scleroarcheology

Keynote: Marcello Mannino, Aarhus University

Dr Marcello Mannino is an Associate Professor in the Department of Archeology at Aarhus University (Denmark) and an Associate Scientist with the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany). He holds a BS with Honors in Archeology and obtained a PhD in Archeology from the University of London (United Kingdom).

Dr Mannino's research interests include human paleoecology and the reconstruction of past environments, subsistence, diet, and mobility. He is currently investigating human dietary change from the late Middle Paleolithic, through the Upper Paleolithic, and to the early Neolithic by means of stable isotope analyses on skeletal remains of Neanderthals and Modern Humans.

4. Growth and Bioenergetics

Keynote: Brian Helmuth, Northeastern University

Dr Brian Helmuth is a Professor of Marine and Environmental Sciences at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. He holds a BS in Biology from Cornell University and obtained an MS in Biology at Northeastern University. He earned a PhD in Zoology from the University of Washington.

Dr Helmuth's research explores the effects of climate and climate change on the physiology and ecology of marine organisms. He uses thermal engineering techniques, including a combination of fieldwork, remote sensing and mathematical modeling, to explore the ways in which the environment determines the body temperatures of coastal marine animals such as mussels and seastars.

5. Deep-time Evolution and Ecology

Keynote: Seth Finnegan, Berkeley

Dr Seth Finnegan is an Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds a BS from the University of Chicago and obtained an MS and PhD in Geological Sciences from the University of California, Riverside.

Dr Finnegan's research integrates data from a variety of sources including field observations, lab work, and literature databases to study the nature of organism-environment interactions through time. He investigates patterns of extinction selectivity, environmental proxies, and methods to reconstruct the structure and function of marine ecosystems through time, with a recent focus on the Ordovician Period (488 to 444 million years ago).

6. Environmental Monitoring and Conservation Paleobiology

Keynote: Greg Dietl, Paleontological Research Institution

Dr Greg Dietl serves as the Director of Collections at the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, New York and holds an adjunct faculty position in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University. He attended Rider University in New Jersey as an undergraduate and obtained a PhD in Zoology from North Carolina State University.

Dr Dietl's research approach is at the interface between ecology and evolutionary paleoecology, integrating interests across diverse fields of organismal and theoretical biology. His work contributes to a growing conceptual understanding of the conditions promoting coevolutionary dynamics between species, particularly predator-prey interactions.

7. Fisheries Ecology and Management

Keynote: John Morrongiello, University of Melbourne

Dr John Morrongiello is a Lecturer in the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne (Australia). He holds a BA/BS with Honors in Marine Ecology and Physical Geography from the University of Melbourne and obtained a PhD in Zoology and Animal Biology at Monash University (Australia).

Dr. Morrongiello works in marine and freshwater systems investigating how aquatic organisms, primarily fish, respond to environmental change on contemporary and evolutionary time scales using field-based and experimental techniques. He is also interested in the impacts of, and adaptations to, natural and human-induced flow variability, fishery activity, and environmental change.